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May 14, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:30
1352 Political Parties: Democrats

Replacing your fear and hatred of foreigners with fear and hatred of the rich...

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Good afternoon, everybody. It's Steph.
Hope you're doing well. It is...
1.33.
Oh! Daddles has been up since the ungodly hour of 5.30 this morning when Princess Isabella decided to grace the awake world with her presence.
And it's now 1.30.
I'm heading off to the gym to try and shake some life into these tired bones.
I hope you're doing very well.
So... This is part two, and I may do more parts of this because I think it is very interesting, but this is the look at the Democrats.
And I hope it will be of interest to you.
So, I don't think I'm particularly the first to say it.
I may not be the last.
That Republicans are like the angry dads.
You know, they're sort of managed by fear.
And the Democrats are like the guilt-inducing moms who manage through guilt and manipulation.
And these are very broad categories, so to speak.
But I think it's still not a bad place to start.
And so if we look at the general characteristics of Democrats versus Republicans, Republicans, they tend to be homogenous in their view of the inside of the country, and the polarization is us versus them outside the country.
So, it's not a yin-yang thing.
It's not a Tao. We, the circle, we, the country, the circle, are unified and one.
And outside, there are all these enemies.
And those enemies can come in, you know, like Al-Qaeda, like Mexican workers, and so on, rampaging cannibalistic Canadians and so on.
But the general projection of enemies is outside.
And that, of course, is a very primal and primitive, patriarchal, masculine-y kind of tribal view of the world, that we are the tribe, we are one, and outside the tribe are forces of malevolence that we must guard against their infiltration and so on.
And this is why there's this fear and this hysteria, right, to live in a world of attack.
And as mentioned in the last show, the attack shows up.
It is self-attack initially.
All attack upon others is founded upon self-attack initially.
The attack on others is merely to attempt to regain power, to regain some sense of equilibrium.
There is the self-attack of religion.
Which translates itself into the inner good, outer bad.
And in a metaphorical way that I would hesitate to prove, but I think is still somewhat relevant, that translates to the inner soul of God is good, the outer shell or body of the devil is bad.
And so there is that aspect as well of how the Republicans approach the world.
And so the us versus them in Republicanism is...
Internal versus external.
Now, that does not always necessarily mean in the country or out of the country, because many Republicans, particularly more on the libertarian side, and many libertarians as well, minarchists, view the local as the good and the remote as the bad, right?
So most Republicans are like, USA, USA. You know, some Republicans are like, my town, my town, right?
And federal government is equivalent to being ruled by, you know, French fags or something.
So that hostility towards the federal government is even more local in the Republican mindset.
And that, I think, is important to recognize as well.
That it's very much an us versus them.
The us is local and the them is external.
For the most part, it's USA, foreign countries.
To a smaller degree, it is, you know, let's secede if we're Texas, because the federal government is foreign.
But that's not how the Democrat mindset works in particular.
The Democrat mindset is international.
It's more international in flavor.
Right, so when France did not support the American invasion of Iraq, Americans got all kind of pissy about French fries and, I mean, just hysterical, bizarre, creepy, weird nonsense like that.
But the Democrats look to other countries and say, gosh, Canada has this great healthcare system and Sweden has this great social safety net.
So they're not an us versus them in that way.
However, the Democrats are class baiters in a way that the Republicans are not, right?
So the Joe the Plumber is, you know, the working class hero, fits into the Republican paradigm quite well, because the Republican paradigm is not primarily class-based, but tribe, tribal-based, or rather the tribe is the nation, right?
It's geographical, it's not Class-based.
But because the Democrats come out of the communists, the Fabian socialists, and the socialists as a whole, their us versus them is class-based.
And because communism has had an international character since its beginning, it is international communism, it has a hostility towards the nation-state because it believes that the rights and needs of workers are universal.
And countries are insignificant, and nationalism is a distraction.
And so, because the Democrats have their roots in this kind of utopian socialism and communism, they don't view foreign countries as enemies.
Because their enemies, like, they hate the rich in all countries, right?
And so, their enemies are class-based.
And that is quite interesting, which is why, of course, they associate the Republicans with the rich, which is not even a half-truth, because Republicans appeal to quite a large degree to lower middle-class whites.
I mean, it's big, right?
I mean, it's the gun-toting Republican out shooting his...
Dan Quayle, right? So, the Democrats are internationalists and are class-based.
And again, I'm not saying these are staggeringly original, but I think that the history and the organization can be useful, and hopefully we'll get into some of this mildly original as we go forward.
Now... The difference, and in my experience, Democrats are smarter than Republicans, which is not to say better people.
Intelligence is very dangerous, right?
It can be a real problem. But Democrats are smarter than Republicans, and it requires a more ironic, ambivalent, and sophisticated mindset to be a Democrat than it does to be a Republican, because the Democrat argument is based on A nonsense-based argument, right? So, the nationalist argument is in your face.
It's geographical, it's local, you can see it, you can touch it, it's my country, you look at a map and blah blah blah, right?
So, a knee-jerk, reactionary, perceptual range of the moment, base of the brain thinkers, or people, which go all the way to the top levels of republicanism, they can process Physical proximity very easily,
right? It's not a very sophisticated argument to say USA, USA. It is a more sophisticated, which is to say taller than Danny DeVito, it is a more sophisticated argument to process class warfare than it is to say my country right or wrong, right? So it takes more...
The Democrats actually have an argument.
Obviously, they're completely wrong, but they have an argument.
Whereas the Republicans just have the geographical reach-around, right?
They just have...
You're close.
All they have is proximity and passion.
Insanity, intensity, hysteria, right?
But the Democrats, they actually have an argument.
And so, it takes more intelligence.
It takes... More abstract reasoning and processing to be a Democrat, which is why Democrats tend to be a lot funnier, right?
Because intelligence and humor is quite related, and it takes a bit of an ironical and distant view of things to get good comedy going.
I'm no comedy expert, but that's sort of my understanding of it.
And this is why comedians, who are, I mean, obviously verbally very intelligent, are very...
Comedians, entertainers, and musicians, and all the people who have that kind of fluid intelligence tend to gravitate more towards the...
Because they're smart enough to recognize that geographical proximity is not a good basis for a political philosophy, right?
They get that much, at least.
But they're not smart enough to move beyond the worlds of words that are created with these kind of arguments.
So I think that's a very important aspect of the democratic mindset.
And to me, it explains a lot about the different types of people I don't know if IQ studies have been done between Democrats and Republicans.
And because guilt is a more sophisticated method of control than fear.
It's relatively easy for an idiot to bully a kid into giving him his lunch money.
I mean, it's relatively easy.
You should shake your fist and growl and so on.
And the kid's going to do a rational calculation of two bucks versus new teeth.
And so it's relatively easy and doesn't take any brains and takes a very primitive mindset to rule by fear, right?
But it takes more cunning and more language skills and more creativity and more of a fluid and sensitive personality To rule by guilt, right?
So I think those two aspects of things are very important, and that's why it is a step forward to go from republicanism to being a democrat.
I don't mean morally, I just mean in terms of the sophistication of the argument and the emotional and intellectual apparatuses that are required to sustain the belief.
And this, of course, is also why women tend to be a little bit more democrats and men tend to be a little bit more republican.
Alright, so we continue with the gym and I do appreciate your patience with the background noise.
It's strange but true that podcasts for me are a form of disinhibition and I just find that I don't podcast nearly as well when I'm not distracted by other things like lifting girly weights and so on.
I just thank you for your patience as I work through this.
Now, the two mechanisms that we're talking about in terms of control is direct control, which is physical threat and fear, and the other is Is indirect control, which is guilt, right?
So, to take a silly example, if we look at these two paradigms, how do you get other kids' money, like their lunch money, if you're a bully?
Well, you can shake a fist in their face and threaten to punch their lights out.
Or you can say, I'd like you to contribute for the kids who don't have nearly as much as you do, and that kind of stuff, right?
With the sort of guilt aspect.
And I understand that the latter does not violate the NAP, but that is the cover that the Democrats use, right?
It's sympathy for the less fortunate that they use as the cover for the thefts that they believe are moral.
Now, in many ways, people who can handle more complex concepts tend to be less aggressive, right?
Because aggression is the hysterical reaction formation that overlays ambivalence, right?
So if you're deeply ambivalent, but you can't handle it, then you simply get aggressive when situations trigger your ambivalence, because ambivalence triggers self-attack, guilt.
You're not only supposed to believe one thing, you know, Jesus is Lord, USA, USA. So when doubts about the virtues of that come up, people get very hysterically aggressive, which is more on the Republican side.
If you can handle a little bit more ambivalence, then you tend to be less directly aggressive.
And I think that's sort of important.
It's really hard to think that Bill Clinton would have started the war in Iraq, which is not to say that he didn't bomb Sudan or whatever, right?
Libya, but it's hard, and he didn't sort of get involved in Kosovo, but it's hard to think that he would have started some massive war.
Now, it's hard to say. I think he would have gone into Afghanistan, but I doubt he would have gone into Iraq.
And again, we're talking, you know, this is not black and white.
These are all degrees, right?
But I do find that Democrats are funnier.
Democrats usually are better read.
Democrats are more comfortable and familiar with other cultures.
They're more comfortable and familiar with multiculturalism.
And they tend to operate more on guilt than they do on fear, right?
So Bill Clinton's autobiography was all about his desire to create a more perfect union, right?
Whereas if George Bush ever writes it, it's going to be about, you know, protecting the homeland and waging the war on terror and so on, right?
And, I mean, this is why the war on terror, the name was chosen by the by.
I mean, it is actually a war on terror.
It's a war on your own terror.
Because war combats your own terror.
So, I think that's...
I just sort of wanted to throw that in by the buy-in.
So, if we look at...
And again, to polarize these perhaps too broadly...
If we look at these as traditional masculine, traditional feminine ways of approaching, the challenge of femininity has always been to influence decisions when being in no position to command decisions.
It is a slave mentality.
Not because women are slaves, but because that's how they were treated throughout most of human history.
And still to a last degree in the present, particularly in non-Western countries.
So there's this basic problem that the woman needs to get things done, needs to have decisions made, needs to have control over her environment, but she's smaller, weaker, and perpetually disabled with pregnancy, post-childbirth, breastfeeding, and so on, right?
So how is it that the woman can begin to Influence, right?
So in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the woman says, the man is the head of the household.
It's true, but the woman is the neck, and turns the man's head any which way she wants, right?
And that is a traditional and funny approach, right?
That women are the powers behind the throne, and women have these indirect ways of having men make decisions.
And, of course, the thing is that the woman manipulates the man into thinking that he has made the decision when she is the one, in fact, who is...
Who is, you know, controlling the puppet strings, right?
And that, of course, is interesting to think about when you think about Laura Bush and the invasion of Iraq, or American women in general, and the war, right?
To what degree were the men being run by the women in that context?
That would be something worth exploring, and I'm sure some people have, so if you come across that, do let me know.
So, the women have developed these emotionally manipulative ways of getting Their way, right?
For reasons of weakness and disability through childbirth and so on, they sort of couldn't do the fear thing, right?
I mean, they can do the fear thing on their young children, right?
And it is very, I think, common and tragic that the aggression against women that is common throughout history and across much of the world is so consistently acted out against young boys by mothers, right?
And so on. And we can see, those of us who've had abusive or highly dysfunctional mothers, can see that when we're young, there's the physical threat, and then when we get older, it all becomes about the verbal acuity, the debate that goes on, the control, the manipulation, the guilt, the, you know, don't you love me, and if you loved me, you would do what I ask, and so on, right?
It becomes all about that kind of stuff, and that is the transition, to me, from Republican to Democrat, right?
So, all abusive mothers are Republicans.
When their kids are smaller, when kids get older, they switch to Democrat and rely on guilt and manipulation and verbal control, right?
Which is another reason why the people who are more adept verbally We tend to be on the Democrat side because that's about the verbal control of the gun, right? I mean, the Republican side is the muscular control of the gun.
The Democrat side is the verbal control of the gun.
And those two are very different. And this is why, of course, you know, a lot of people who are sort of no-neck sports heroes tend to be more on the Republican side.
And a lot of the people who end up in the media, right, the writers, the reporters, the artists, and so on, who are more verbally acute, have either inherited or had provoked that verbal acuity through manipulation on one or both parents, probably the mother.
And therefore, the war of words rather than the war of fists that is waged by Democrats versus Republicans is much more in tune With their skills, abilities, and nature, right?
The war of words is waged by the powerless, as we've talked about, and as Nietzsche has talked about before, right?
That they attempt to infect the physically stronger with the hooks and puppet strings of guilt and control that way, because they're physically weaker, right?
And so it's the aged, it's the women, it's and so on, the children, who tend to be more that way.
And of course, if you look at the focus of Republican efforts versus the focus of Democrat efforts, you can very clearly see that they tend to fall along gender lines, right?
So, the focus of the Republicans is, you know, law and order, protecting the borders, war, criminality, protection of property, justice.
You know, crime and punishment and so on, right?
And these would, you know, generally tend to be traditionally masculine concerns.
And conversely, if you look at the concerns of the Democrats, it's health care, right?
Why is it health care?
Well, because it is women who take care of the sick.
In general. And what else is it for?
Well, it is for pensions, right?
Social Security. Why? Because it is women who take care of the aged, right?
And what else?
Is it all about?
Well, they're about education, right?
Public school, teacher unions, and so on, all Democrats, right?
Why? Because mothers, traditionally, mothers are responsible for and invested in, and home to oversee, or at least to work with, the education of the children, right?
So, that's their focus, right?
When I use the word feminine, I don't mean all women, and I generally mean that which has been inherited from a highly dysfunctional past and a largely dysfunctional present.
But for the traditional patriarch, the threat comes from outside the tribe, right?
And from the young inside the tribe, which is why Republicans tend to be eye-rolling and aggressive kids these days, right?
They represent the elder patriarchs who have been threatened by the growing strength of the young.
That's one aspect.
The class stuff is fundamentally not about class.
If you look at class conflict in its essence, it is about the exploitation of the weaker and dependent by the more powerful and brutal.
The sensitivity and intelligence tends to lie with the oppressed.
And the brutality and selfishness tends to reside with the oppressors, right?
Now, why would anyone believe all of this nonsense called Marxism and Socialism and so on?
I mean, most people don't even know any capitalists, right?
But the reason why it's believable is that this is the feminine view of the patriarchy, right?
Because the class is simply about the patriarchy, right?
And the capitalists are the fathers, the patriarchs, right?
And the workers, you could say the middle class are the mothers, the workers are the children, but generally it is believable because that is the experience.
That women have of the world, of being controlled by brutal patriarchs and not being allowed any say.
One of the main arguments against class conflict is that Workers can leave, right?
But in Marxism and in socialism, the workers are considered helpless and can't leave.
And why is that believable when everybody knows you can quit a job?
Well, it's believable because, historically, women have been functionally completely unable to leave marriages, right?
And so it's believable because women can't leave the marriages, can't own property, can't enter into contracts, can't have jobs, remain frivolously or uneducated.
And so the class warfare stuff is simply an expression of patriarchy versus matriarchy, and that's why people believe this nonsense, which is completely non-empirical, because The women feel, and I think somewhat justly throughout history, women feel like proletariats, right? Like they have no choice.
And I think that's pretty accurate, right?
They were handed off from their father to their husband, and then they take care of their children, and then they take care of their aged parents, and then they take care of their aged husbands, right?
And act as babysitters for their grandchildren.
Don't feel free, and of course it won't, throughout history.
And so the idea that the workers have no choice, the workers have no options, the workers have no recourse, and the capitalists own and run everything, that's just husband-wife throughout history.
It had nothing to do with economic reality, and certainly that was how Marx saw his family.
And as support, I'm not saying proof, but as strong support for that, I would...
I want to point out the not inconsiderable fact that Marxism and Socialism have taken root in those countries and cultures where the women are the most oppressed, where it's managed to win over against religion.
So, Russia was never supposed to be a candidate for Socialism because Russia hadn't even entered the capitalist phase yet, but Russia became communist because Russian women were pretty much the most oppressed and abused, right?
In the Western or quasi-Western world at the time, right?
So that would be one example.
And if you look at the way that communism and socialism has entered into cultures like Korea or Cambodia or Vietnam or whatever, well, these are brutal on women.
And where women have been the most free, such as America, well, that's a pretty strong...
And England, right?
It's a pretty strong bulwark against communism.
So I just sort of wanted to point that out as a way of understanding why caste conflict is so believable to people, even though it makes no sense.
And it's entirely bigoted, right?
How many people have actually even met one of these capitalists, right?
How many people would be confused about whether or not you could quit a job in a relatively free market?
But it's believable because It is a mirror of familial gender conflicts throughout history.
So, that would be something that I would propose as a way of understanding some of the difference between the Republican and Democrat side.
Now, of course, the terrible thing that occurs, and this is a horrifyingly consistent pattern over human history, which in the future we, of course, are attempting to change, but the tragedy is that women feel powerless, right, in history and in many places in their relationships.
And some of that is, you know, because of nasty patriarchy, and some of that is Biological facts about dependence, right?
And so what happens is when you feel powerless towards a more proximate or local authority figure, there's this great temptation which seems completely overwhelming and irresistible to people at all times and in all places.
And I can sort of understand why.
But there's this irresistible temptation when you feel dominated and controlled by An omnipotent or virtually omnipotent or effectively omnipotent local authority is to wish to invent a super authority that can save you.
To take an example which sort of falls in line with what we were talking about earlier, one of the first One of the first movements that women's suffrage gave rise to was, you know, Christian Women's Temperance Union and so on, was prohibition, right, was banning of alcohol.
Well, why would women want to ban alcohol?
Well, women want to ban alcohol because their men were often drunkards.
And they were powerless to leave their husbands, and they were powerless to control their drinking, and so they wanted, because they were so oppressed by a violent and arbitrary local authority, i.e.
drunken husband, who pissed away all their money and beat the kids and beat them and so on, they viewed alcohol as the problem, and of course it is a huge problem, but Because they were helpless in the face of this local and brutal patriarchy with the alcoholic husband, they appealed to an omnipotent, all-powerful external authority to control the local authority that was oppressing them, in fact, right?
And this, oh man, it's just brutal.
It's just brutal, right?
So if women had husbands who wouldn't save for their old age, right?
Just wouldn't save for their old age.
Well, they couldn't convince their husbands to save for their old age.
And so what they got behind, and I'm generalizing, but forgive me, what they got behind was Social Security, which forces Men, so to speak, to save for their old age.
It's like, you're not going to set aside 10% of your paycheck, I'm going to have the government do it.
So that I am not dependent, I as a wife, and my old age is not dependent upon you and your inability to save.
Especially because I'm going to live longer than you in general.
So that aspect of things was really important as well.
When women feel oppressed by a local authority, an immediate, real, patriarchal, usually, authority, they have this fantasy that this external authority called the state will save them.
Now, of course, they know the state's mostly populated by men, and this is the white knight, right, coming to save them from their fate, right?
And they just have, you know, in the classic fairy tale, generally just has to sit there and look pretty, right?
And in this fairy tale of statism, they just have to vote, right, and lobby their congressmen and so on, and then congressmen will give them their Goodies in exchange, right?
And of course all that happens is they do gain some measure of security, right?
A woman whose husband would not save for her old age did gain some security from old age pensions, of course, right?
But as we talked about in the recent True News 38 and 39 on unions, particularly 38, you pay for everything you get, or rather your children pay for everything you get, right?
So, I think that's a really important aspect to look at.
And you can see this showing up over and over again, right?
This local, you know, for every Darth Vader, there's a fantasy Obi-Wan Kenobi, right?
And this fantasy that because we are oppressed by a local dictator, we are going to create an abstract remote dictator who's going to serve our benefits, not his, right?
And if you sort of understand this aspect, and we still are, believe it or not, talking about Democrats, right?
But if you understand this aspect, that the state is created to save you from local familial despotism, I think it's easy to understand how the idea that communism was going to create a dictatorship of the proletariat, right? It was going to be this abstract authority that was going to save you from this local despotism called a capitalist boss or a foreman or something.
Well, it's believable because everybody's lived it familiarly, and then it's abstracted and exploited at the political and philosophical level.
Remember the distinction that we're working with here, that, as always, of course, the country represents the tribe.
Then, for Republicans, for the masculine, the threat comes from two groups.
Those outside the tribe, who might usurp his power, and those within the tribe, particularly young males within the tribe, who are a threat to his waning power as he ages.
And so that's why you get this Republican hostility towards outsiders and the young men, right?
Long-haired hippie, blah blah blah, right?
Unless those young men are in the service of elderly power in the form of the military.
And firefighters, police, and so on.
They love those guys, but the young men who aren't are real threats, right?
And it's all very, you know, it's all very Planet of the Apes, but this is the level at which most people, no matter how sophisticated their abstractions are, are fundamentally operating on.
Right, we are abstracting apes.
That's most of what's called what passes for thinking.
Right, so for Republicans, a threat comes from the outside, and the threat comes from the young, because it's patriarchy.
But for the Democrats, the threat comes from within the tribe.
Because it is the patriarchy which is within the tribe.
And there's a lot of sympathy for the young, because generally when children are young, they align with their mothers.
Young men, to some degree, but when children are young, their allegiance is more towards their mother than their father, which is why the Democrats, based on this sort of feminine approach, view the threats that's coming from within society, from the hierarchy within their own society, and are international in flavor, and are more friendly towards the young than Republicans are, right?
Women face threats from within the tribe in the form of the patriarchal hierarchy and gained more sympathy from their own children and therefore are more friendly towards the young than Republicans are.
Now here the objection may be raised, and it may not be the first objection that's raised, but still we'll talk about it.
The objection can be raised and say, Steph, well if If women and Democrats are against war, then why so many women for the war interact with Afghanistan and so on?
Well, women tend to cleave to the patriarchy when there's an external threat, right?
They'll return their allegiance to the patriarchy when there's an external threat, because better the devil you know, right?
So that's one aspect. But the second aspect, which I think is interesting, it's a clever answer, maybe too clever, you can be the judge, or a judge, Which is that women tend to be, and Democrats tend to be, pro-war but anti-draft.
Right? Pro-war but anti-draft.
And why would that be the case?
I think it's an interesting question.
My answer to that would be that women, of course, have this deep-seated hatred of the patriarchy.
And therefore, to the men who support the patriarchy.
Now, in a quote, volunteer army...
Those who join up are those who are going to be part of the brutal hierarchy that oppresses women.
And therefore, having those people killed off is really not so bad.
It's their way of striking back against the patriarchy by bleeding off the supporters of the patriarchy.
But if there's a draft, then they're bleeding off potential supporters.
Plus, they can't raise their own children to avoid military service and so on.
So, women tend to be a little bit more pro-war But not pro-draft, whereas a lot more men tend to be pro-draft, at least certainly on the Republican side.
But I think that's an interesting aspect, that it does bleed off those who will oppress the women in the patriarchy to have those who are supporting the patriarchy go off and die in a war.
Again, I'm not saying if it's conscious, but I think it's there.
Now, another interesting thing that I mention by the by, while it's on my mind, is that The brutal and overt violence of fascistic or patriarchal or republican or whatever you want to call them kinds of societies tend to be those which end up provoking rebellions,
the most rebellions, whereas rebellions don't so much occur in the more feminized or democrat style of dictatorship.
And I think that's partly because the brutality of violence is easier to identify and respond to as opposed to the sort of slow strangulation and suffocation that occurs through guilt, right? The slow strangling nets of guilt and obligation and so on.
And so you would see The Americans had a rebellion.
The Russians, under communism, did not, because communism is more feminine than fascism.
And this, by the by, is why people who have two abusive parents often find it easier to separate from the father than from the mother, because violence can be resisted through simple reaction formations, but Guilt and obligation can't require self-knowledge and strict philosophical wisdom.
Anyway, that's the beginning.
There's more to talk about. If you're interested in this topic, that's the beginning of my talk about the Democrats.
I hope that that's of interest to you.
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